The beginnings and development of a New Zealand music: The life ...

in a short time over the winter of 1951.
Elegy was first performed in the Library Hall, Wellington,28 1n
]951 by Gerald Christeller - a former pupil of Lilburn's - and
Frederick Page.
noted:
One reviewer of this performance in a curious report
"Though the atonal nature of this music may
have seemed strange to many of the audience,
there can be no doubt that they were hearing
something which must be regarded as a
cultural landmark •••• The blending of poetry
and music was successful and did not detract
from the typically New Zealand aspects of the
poem. "29
In Wellington in the late-1940s and early-1950s there was a
growing awareness, in music circles, of the fact that radically new
directions in composition were being explored overseas. Little of this
new music, though, was finding its way to New Zealand. and indeed,
twentieth-century music pe4 ~e was being largely neglected by performers.
To help provide a platform for this new music, and to help keep
in touch with developments in composition overseas, it was decided that
a society for contemporary music should be founded in New Zealand, and
that it should be affiliated to the International Society for Contemporary
Music. 30 Frederick Page was a prime mover in the establishment of this
New Zealand section of the International Society for Contemporary Music,
as was pianist Dorothy Davies and violinist Francis Rosner.
The New
Zealand Section was affiliated to the parent body by the Assembly of
Delegates at its meeting in Palermo in April 1949. 31
106
28 A capacity crowd attended this performance. "Poets had to turn
people away from their public reading in the Library Hall on Thursday
night when the 'caretaker threatened to switch off the lights if more
were admitted. The seating, aisles, and doorways were packed tight."
(Unsourced clipping, photocopy with author).
29 ibid.
30 The International'Societyfor Contemporary Music was organised asa
result of the International Festival held at Salzburg in 1922 by a
group of young Viennese composers, mostly pupils of Schoenberg. At
this festival, seven programmes of chamber music by contemporary
composers were presented in four days. Subsequent meetings led to
th~ formation of the society in 1923 with Professor E.J. Dent
elected as the first president, and headquarters established at the
Contemporary Music Centre of the British Music Society in London.
The society was founded with the objective of arranging international
music festivals for the purposes of promoting new music. Membership
of the ISCM has remained fairly constant in the sixty-plus years of
its existence: currently there are about thirty member countries.
31 The International Society for Contemporary Music (N.Z. Section)
Arts Year Book no.7, 1951:162-3.